The war, 1861–1865

What each of the colonists did in the Civil War, so far as the record says. The company had dissolved before the war began; the people were still there — French, Belgian and Swiss subjects, none of them naturalized — on a Confederate frontier that wanted their guns and their sons. The witnesses name six who wore the uniform and three who served the army's supply trains and arms works; the National Archives' name index adds two fathers and a jeweller in the state troops, three Réunion boys in the regiment that seized the colony's guns, two conscripts, and two possible Union troopers. The rest kept out of it, left, or took the other side. The service register is the positions page; this page reads it against the witnesses and the index and says where they disagree.

The colony's stand, 1861

Santerre, whose father lived through it, says the colonists "took a neutral stand": they had left Europe to get away from wars, they were against slavery, and they were not citizens of the country asking them to fight. That brought the recruiters. A colonist was shot in the hip on the road to the colony — Santerre names him François Girard, "a young man," and calls the shot accidental; Sandell has "the old man," who did not understand the order to stop, and no accident about it. The colonists gathered their few arms in the stone storehouse. When the Confederate detachment came back to enlist the able-bodied men, Alexander Lanotte, who had the English, talked to the officer at the door; on his signal the windows burst open with a gun in every one. The detachment withdrew to Dallas believing it faced a superior force. [santerre XII; sandell IV; kagay]

The parley came from the Dallas side: Dr. Arch M. Cochran, captain of the Confederate squad at Dallas, rode out, settled it, and persuaded the Confederate authorities that men who could not follow the issues in English were no threat. Most of the town, Sandell says, thought the colonists "peace loving and tired of war" and shielded them. The exemption that followed is told two ways. Santerre says it came from the War Governor of Texas, and the Crétien family kept a certificate "signed by the War Governor" exempting Athanase as a citizen of France. Sandell looked for the governor's order in the Texas State Archives and found no such document; she reads the colonists as covered by the general Confederate exemption for un-naturalized foreigners, which Kagay dates to late 1861. Both can be true — a general order, and a certificate issued under it — but the certificate has not been examined by this project. [santerre XII, biographies; sandell IV; kagay]

The exemption did not end it. Confederate commanders short of weapons took "all the useable guns" at the colony before 1862, and on 16 May 1862 twenty-five colonists petitioned the governor to be paid for firearms taken "by threat and assault" by men of Col. N. H. Darnell's regiment, who had entered their homes to demand them. Sandell's text dates the petition 16 May; her footnote to the same document (Texas State Archives, box 301-40, no. 21) says 16 March. The petition is the one wartime document with the colonists' own signatures on it, and its twenty-five names are not in any source this project holds. [sandell IV; kagay] The oldest colonist, Jean-Baptiste Lagogue, who had marched for Napoleon, fashioned a steel-tipped pike after the shooting of his comrade and had to be held back from the Confederate patrols; he died a few years later, the first burial in the colony cemetery. [santerre XII, biographies] The war's one colonist death by violence came late: Joseph Charpentier, shoemaker, Capy's father-in-law, killed at the old Trinity ford by "renegades" — 1864 in Capy's 1892 sketch and in Santerre, only "during the war" in Sandell; Mrs. Capy's 1932 letter called them Quantrill's men, which Sandell could not confirm. [lewis1892; santerre biographies; sandell II/IV]

Who did what

The witnesses name six men in a Confederate unit and three more who worked for the army without, so far as they say, carrying a rifle. The tally is Santerre's own: "a few other young, single men also enlisted, but as the majority of the colonists were older men with families, the colony did not furnish the South with a great many soldiers" — out of "three hundred or more." [santerre XII] The rows marked nps come from the National Park Service's Soldiers and Sailors index to the compiled service records, searched for every surname in the registry (August 2026); see the index below.

In uniform

Henri Boll: commissary department, Col. Buford, then Post Waco, Confederate army — 1862-01 – 1865 (enlisted) [santerre XII; cordillot]
the timeline's life-events layer also lists a Boll in Co. K, 19th Texas Cavalry, with the Knapflis -- which Boll is unstated. The NPS index has no Henri/Henry Boll in any Texas unit and no Boll on the 19th Cavalry's 1,409-name roster: consistent with commissary employment, not enlistment
Achille Frichot: Co. B, 19th Texas Cavalry (Burford); corporal, Confederate army — 1862 (enlisted) [santerre XII; nps]
NPS: 'Frichot, Ashiel', Co. B, corporal in and out (M227 roll 12)
Emile Remond: Co. B, 19th Texas Cavalry, then Pratt's Battery; colour-bearer, Confederate army — 1863-03-21 – 1865 (enlisted) [cordillot; santerre XII; nps]
wounded; captured at Saline, escaped twice; ambushed at Tensas Bayou, La. NPS: 'Reimond, Emile', Co. B, ensign in and out (M227 roll 30); not on the index roster of the 10th Field Battery, Texas Light Artillery (Pratt's), 206 names -- the transfer would be in the jacket
Jacob Knopfli: Co. K, 19th Texas Cavalry, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [sandell IV]
with a Wm Knapfli; from the timeline's life-events layer, to verify. NPS: no Jacob or William under any spelling; the one Knopfli in Texas is Henry, below
Wm Knapfli: Co. K, 19th Texas Cavalry, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [sandell IV; kagay]
Sandell (after Cochran) has William and Jacob Knapfly; Kagay, William and Joseph; NPS has neither
John B. Louckx: Co. F, Waller's Battalion; two years, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [santerre XII; cordillot; nps]
NPS: 'Louckx, J.B.', Co. F, Waller's Regiment, Texas Cavalry, private (M227 roll 22)
Charles Voirin: Co. B, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell's); private, out as sergeant, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 37, alt. 'Vorin'. Darnell's is the regiment whose men seized the colonists' guns in 1862 (sandell IV)
Alfred Voirin: Co. B, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell's); ensign in, private out, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 37, alt. 'Alford Vorin'; not in the registry -- presumably Charles Voirin's family
Julius Royer: Co. C, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell's); private, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 31, 'Royer, Julis'. Corroborates his 1898 obituary -- a drummer with Walker's division at Mansfield; Darnell's 18th served dismounted in Walker's Texas Division
Claus Henry Frick: Co. K, 6th Texas Infantry; private, Confederate army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 12. A candidate for the registry's Heinrich Frick (Sandell's Mountain Creek rancher), not an attestation

In the war's workshops

Paul Henri: arms factory -- the Lancaster pistol works, Confederate war industry — 1863 – 1865 (hired) [cordillot; santerre XII; sandell]
no Henri in the NPS Texas index -- civilian employment, as Sandell and Cordillot read it
Maxime Guillot: supervisor of army wagon and vehicle manufacture, Confederate war industry — undated (hired) [santerre XII]
Guillot's wagon factory survived the 1860 fire (sandell III); no Guillot in the NPS Texas index
Jean Priot: wagon supply trains; quartermaster, Confederate army (employee) — 1861 – 1865 (hired) [santerre XII; cordillot]
the one Priot in the NPS Texas index is 'Priot, P.', Texas Conscripts (M227 roll 29) -- initial conflicts with Jean; a conscription card would fit an army employee

In the state troops

Pierre Philip Frichot: Co. H, 3rd Texas Infantry State Troops (six months, 1863-64), Texas State Troops — 1863 – 1864 (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 12. In no narrative source: the father in the state troops while the son was in the cavalry
Christopher D. Frichot: Co. H, 3rd Texas Infantry State Troops (six months, 1863-64), Texas State Troops — 1863 – 1864 (enlisted) [nps]
M227 roll 12, 'Frichot, C.D.'; same company as his brother
Louis Reinhardt: Good's Company, Texas Light Artillery State Troops (Dallas Light Artillery), Texas State Troops — undated (enlisted) [nps]
the index also has a Louis Reinhardt in Shea's 4th Battalion Artillery and Hobby's 8th Infantry, coast units -- one man or two, unresolved

Exempted, or conscripted

Henry Knopfli: Texas Conscripts, Confederate conscription — undated (conscripted) [nps]
M227 roll 20; the only Knopfli in the Texas index -- neither the Jacob nor the William of Cochran's list. Relation to Jacob Knopfli unknown
Athanase Cretien: exempted from active service as a French citizen, Confederate conscription — 1862 (exempted) [cordillot; kagay]
the general exemption for un-naturalized foreigners, late 1861 (kagay)

The other side

Jean Santerre: Co. B, 1st Texas Cavalry (U.S.); private, Union army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M393 roll 2. The only Santerre in the whole NPS index, and a Union one. Not a son of François: the 1860 household and the family tree have Appolinaire (b. 1843), Germain (1848), Emanuel (1850), Raphael (1853), no Jean. The 1st Texas (U.S.) was raised at New Orleans, Nov 1862 - Feb 1864, largely from refugees and foreigners. Chronicling America 1860-1900 (LA, TX) has no Jean Santerre. The M402 jacket (FamilySearch/Fold3, sign-in) would give age, birthplace and enlistment place
Paul Girard: Co. M, 1st, then Co. D, 2nd Texas Cavalry (U.S.); private, Union army — undated (enlisted) [nps]
M393 roll 1. The registry has Pierre, J. and F. Girard, no Paul; Chronicling America (LA, TX, 1860-1900) has no Paul Girard. The M402 jacket would settle it
Benjamin Lang: Unionist; petitioner for federal troops at Dallas, Union side — 1865 – 1868 (informal) [cordillot]
with Gouffé; the petition cites the violence promised to 'Unionists and freed Blacks'
A.J. Gouffe: Unionist; petitioner for federal troops at Dallas, Union side — 1865 – 1868 (informal) [cordillot]

Out of the country

Jean Loupot: in Mexico, freighting cotton, four years, civilian — 1861 – 1865 (informal) [lewis1892]
his 1892 sketch; Cordillot has him at Kaufman County in 1857 and back in Dallas 1869

Read against the witnesses

Emile Remond is the one full soldier's story, and the sources tell it four times — Santerre twice, the 1892 sketch, Cordillot — and not identically. He volunteered on 21 March 1863 (Santerre's biography, Cordillot; the 1892 sketch says "when the Civil war opened"), into Co. B of the 19th Texas Cavalry — "Ensign" and colour-bearer by Cochran's account, which Sandell follows — then after a year into Pratt's Battery of Parsons' brigade, again as flag-bearer. He was "taken prisoner with General Marmaduke at Saline, Kansas," escaped after nightfall, and as rear-guard was ambushed by Black troops at Tensas Bayou, Louisiana, took a sabre cut to the right leg and cut his way out; the 1892 sketch dates the ambush 1862, before his enlistment. Cordillot has him wounded, captured, and twice escaped. The place of capture is not settled by anything here; the compiled service record would settle it and the rest. [santerre XII, biographies; lewis1892; sandell IV; cordillot]

Achille Frichot, Pierre-Philippe's son, went into the same company in 1862 under Burford and was made corporal that year — "1st Corporal" in Cochran — and came back to his father in Dallas. Henri Boll enlisted in January 1862 into the commissary; was sent back to Texas for cattle in the spring; served in Burford's regiment to 1 January 1863; then Post Waco, as rationing officer, to the end. Cochran (and Sandell after him) instead put a Boll in Co. K of the 19th Texas Cavalry as a private with the two Knapflis; Boll's own 1892 sketch does not say that, and which Boll is unstated. Jacob Knopfli and a William Knapfli are in that Co. K only through Cochran; Kagay renders the pair "William and Joseph." John B. Louckx, who had tried to found New Leuven on Mountain Creek, enlisted in Co. F of Waller's Battalion for two years — "one of the first to join" in Santerre's war chapter, but 1863 in his own biography, in the 1892 sketch and in Cordillot's reading; he came back by way of Mexico, where he built. [santerre XII, biographies; sandell IV; kagay; lewis1892; cordillot]

Dallas was the quartermaster and commissary headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department, and Lancaster, south of it, had an arms repair and pistol works and a wagon shop. Paul Henri, engraver and lithographer, left his small house — on colony land in Santerre, already at Lancaster in Cordillot — in 1863 for the pistol works — "joined the Confederate Army and … was assigned" in Santerre, "employed there as an engraver" in Sandell, "embauché" in Cordillot; he stayed at Lancaster after the war and was its Reconstruction postmaster. Maxime Guillot, Dallas's French wagon-maker, not a colonist but the man who found the colonists their first town work, "entered the Confederate army, but being a workman of great skill was assigned to duty as an artisan," superintending the wagons built at Lancaster. Jean Priot, tailor turned farmer, "enlisted after the first year" and was put in charge of the quartermaster's wagon supply trains carrying ammunition to the Texas regiments; the register carries him as an army employee, which is Cordillot's reading ("employé pour le compte de l'armée sudiste"). On a trip home he married Leontine Frichot and left her at her father's. [santerre XII, biographies; sandell IV; lewis1892; cordillot]

The index, read against the witnesses

The National Archives' compiled service records for Texas are indexed by name (NARA M227 for the Confederate side, M393 for the Union), and the index is searchable on nps.gov. Every surname in the registry was run through it with a Texas filter — 202 names — and the hits read against the witnesses. What the witnesses say, it largely confirms: Emile Remond is there as "Reimond, Emile," Co. B, 19th Texas Cavalry, ensign in and ensign out, which is Cochran's rank; Achille Frichot is "Frichot, Ashiel," Co. B, corporal in and out; John B. Louckx is "Louckx, J.B.," Co. F of Waller's regiment, private. Remond does not appear on the index roster of Pratt's 10th Field Battery (206 names); his transfer, and where he was captured, would be in the record jacket, not the index. [nps]

What the witnesses do not say, it adds. Pierre Philip Frichot and Christopher D. Frichot, the two Frichot fathers, are in Co. H of the 3rd Texas Infantry State Troops, the six-month levy of 1863–64 — the "older men with families" of Santerre's sentence were in the state militia while Achille rode with the cavalry. Louis Reinhardt, the Saxon jeweller, is in Good's Company, the Dallas Light Artillery of the state troops. And three names from the colony are in the 18th Texas Cavalry — Darnell's, the regiment whose men took the colonists' guns "by threat and assault" in 1862: Charles Voirin (Co. B, private to sergeant), an Alfred Voirin in the same company, and Julius Royer (Co. C, private), who had been a colony boy of five in 1855 and whose 1898 obituary made him a drummer with Walker's division at Mansfield — Darnell's 18th served dismounted in Walker's Texas Division, so the index and the obituary agree. Two conscription cards: a Henry Knopfli and a "P. Priot," the only Knopfli and the only Priot in the Texas index — neither the Jacob and William Knapfli of Cochran's list nor, by initial, Jean Priot. [nps; sandell IV; DMN 19 Jan 1898]

What it lacks is as telling. No Boll in any Texas unit and none on the 19th Cavalry's 1,409-name roster — Henri Boll's commissary years were employment, not enlistment, and Cochran's "Boll in Co. K" has no card. No Knapfli under any spelling but Henry. No Henri, no Guillot: the pistol works and the wagon shop were civilian hire. No Long or Lang, no Gouffé, no Barbier, no Capy, Crétien, Thévenet, Nussbaumer, Reverchon, Michel or Santerre on the Confederate side. On the Union side the index holds two names the registry cannot yet place: a Jean Santerre, private, Co. B, 1st Texas Cavalry (U.S.), and a Paul Girard, private in the 1st and then the 2nd Texas Cavalry (U.S.). The colony had a François Santerre and three Girards — Pierre, J. and F.; neither a Jean nor a Paul is attested. They are candidates, entered as such, and they are the only trace of a Réunion surname in a Union uniform. [nps]

Everyone else

Athanase Cretien: Exempted from active service as a French citizen — the one exemption paper the sources describe; moved into Dallas as the colony broke up and was building there after the 1860 fire. [cordillot; santerre biographies; kagay]
Jean Loupot: In Mexico for the four years of the war, freighting cotton — his own 1892 sketch; Cordillot has him at Kaufman County in 1857 and back in Dallas in 1869 and says nothing of Mexico. [lewis1892; cordillot]
Joseph Brunet: Left Dallas for Austin "in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War," and set up an ice factory. [santerre biographies]
Jules Lanotte: Had kept the colony store open on lease since the dissolution; closed it when the war began and bought a farm north of Dallas. Santerre's storekeeper is Jules; the man at the storehouse windows in Sandell and Kagay is Alexander — the registry keeps both. [santerre biographies; sandell IV]
Philip Goetsels: Gave up Mountain Creek in 1862 and moved into Dallas with several of the Belgians — the end of New Leuven; Henri Frick stayed on the land and ranched. [sandell III]
Michel Thevenet: Receiver of the failed society, "in charge of the closing of the affairs of La Reunion early in the beginning of the Civil War," exchanging colonists' shares for colony land. [santerre biographies]
Alexis Bessard: Asked in 1861 to sell what remained and repatriate the money; the last sales were taken in Confederate currency, which he carried to Belgium, where the shareholders refused it. [cordillot]
Julian Reverchon: Named delegate of the 1861 society's supervisory board to Bessard; married Marie Henri on 24 July 1864; two sons born in the war years. [cordillot; santerre biographies; lewis1892]
Charles Capy: In town since 1860; bought an acre from Sarah Cockrell on 11 November 1861, married Nativa Charpentier that year, and built the rock house they kept for forty-three years — a builder through the war, not a soldier. [deeds L/519; santerre biographies; lewis1892]
Jacob Nussbaumer: Bought the colony's communal stove in 1861 for his Dallas abattoir; butchering with Boll "until the breaking out of the war." [santerre; lewis1892 (Boll)]
Francois Santerre: Stayed on at the colony through the war; his eldest son Apollinaire died there and was among the first buried in the cemetery; moved to the Colorado-and-Westmoreland farm in 1866. [santerre biographies]
Victor Prosper Considerant: At San Antonio since the winter of 1856–57, "cut off from the world for five years" by the war and reduced to digging the earth to feed the household; Clarisse Vigoureux died there on 13 January 1865. Amnestied and home to Paris in 1869. [cordillot (DBF notice)]
Francois Cantagrel: Santerre has him leave for Europe in 1863; Cordillot has him gone since August 1856 and European agent of the 1861 society from Neuchâtel. The 1863 date stands only on Santerre. [santerre XI; cordillot]

The other side

Cordillot credits Benjamin Long with "a courageous pro-Unionist attitude" during the war, and says it is why the military governor made him mayor in 1868. The document behind it is later than the war: the petition Long and A. J. Gouffé signed asking for federal troops at Dallas against the "insults, indignities and other violence" their "merciless enemies" promised "Unionists and freed Blacks" belongs to 1865–1868, and Gouffé's county treasurership (November 1867) and the 1868 slate — Long mayor, Alexandre Barbier and John F. Barbier in the marshal's office — are Reconstruction appointments of men the army could trust. What any of them did between 1861 and 1865 is not said. The project's phrase "Long and the Barbiers" for the Unionist wing rests on that slate and on Cordillot's sentence, not on a wartime record. [cordillot; sandell IV; kagay n. 76]

The count

Against Santerre's "three hundred or more": three colonists with a Confederate service card that the witnesses also name (Remond, Achille Frichot, Louckx) and three the witnesses name without a card (Boll, the two Knapflis); five more with a card the witnesses never mention (the two Frichot fathers and Reinhardt in the state troops, Charles Voirin and Julius Royer in Darnell's cavalry, with an Alfred Voirin beside them); two conscripts; three in the war's workshops (Henri, Priot, and Guillot who was never a colonist); one documented exemption (Crétien); twenty-five petitioners whose names are unknown; two who moved away (Loupot to Mexico, Brunet to Austin); Considerant cut off at San Antonio; one killed (Charpentier); one wounded (Girard); two later called Unionists (Long, Gouffé); and two possible Union troopers (a Jean Santerre, a Paul Girard). The colonists were not politically monolithic, and they were not much of a military asset to anyone: most were foreign nationals over forty with families, which is what Santerre says — and the index shows where those older men went, into the six-month state levies of 1863–64.

What would settle the rest: the service-record jackets themselves (NARA M323, by the roll numbers the index gives) for enlistment dates, Remond's transfer and capture, and whether the state-troops Frichots mustered; the 1862 petition, for its twenty-five signatures and its date; the Crétien exemption certificate, for who signed it; the McDermett and Cochran accounts Sandell used; and, for the two Union names, the 1st Texas Cavalry (U.S.) muster rolls. Those are on the roadmap.